Apple’s Vice President of Public Relations Katie Cotton Retires

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Apple’s Vice President of Public Relations Katie Cotton Retires

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Earlier this month it was reported that Apple’s vice president of public relations would be leaving the company at the end of May. Yesterday was Katie Cotton’s last day at Apple, according to a report from Re/code.

Cotton served at Apple for 18-years as a gatekeeper for all media inquiries and organizing all if the executives’ formal and informal meetings with the press. She was tasked with keeping tight control of the company’s PR operations and keeping unannounced products a secret.

In her latest article, Re/code’s Kara Swisher talks about Cotton’s successful strategy. Here is a snippet from her touching farewell piece:

Was she aggressive? Sure. (So is Facebook’s Elliot Schrage.)

Did she try her hardest to showcase Apple and its products in a way that benefited it? Yep. (Paging Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers!)

Consider the various words used to describe her: “Queen of Evil,” “wicked witch,” “cold and distant,” “frigid supremacy,” “queen bee” and, perhaps most obviously misogynistic, “dominatrix.” One time, horror of horrors, she hung up in anger on one reporter, who later took to the comments section of one recent story about her Apple departure and used astonishingly inappropriate words to describe anyone with whom she got along.

No longer. As Cotton told Re/code about leaving Apple: “This is hard for me. Apple is a part of my heart and soul.”

Read Swisher’s full story from the link above. Apple will take the stage at WWDC at the Moscone Center in San Francisco on Monday at 10am PST / 1pm EST. Be sure to tune in to Apple’s livestream of the event, which you can get to from this link.